From UCF Rosen to The Cake Girl: Kristina Lavallee’s Entrepreneurial Journey

For Kristina Lavallee, founder and CEO of The Cake Girl®, building a successful bakery was never just about making beautiful cakes. It was about hospitality, creating memorable experiences, understanding customers, and learning how to turn a passion into a business.

Long before The Cake Girl became a recognizable Tampa bakery creating custom cakes for birthdays, weddings, corporate events, celebrities, and major celebrations, Kristina was a student at the University of Central Florida’s Rosen College of Hospitality Management.

Her education in hospitality and food service helped give her a business foundation that would eventually become an important part of The Cake Girl’s growth.

Today, Kristina’s story connects two things she is passionate about: hospitality and entrepreneurship.

1. Who is Kristina Lavallee?

Kristina Lavallee is the founder and CEO of The Cake Girl® and Crave’n Cups®, an entrepreneur and cake designer based in Tampa, Florida.

Her journey as an entrepreneur began with baking cakes from home in 2008. What started as a passion grew into a business, eventually leading Kristina and her husband, Kirby Lavallee, to launch The Cake Girl dessert truck in 2016 and open The Cake Girl’s Tampa storefront in 2019.

Since then, Kristina and The Cake Girl team have created cakes for thousands of celebrations, ranging from birthdays and weddings to corporate events and elaborate large-scale cake builds.

Her creations have also been enjoyed by recognizable names including Tom Brady, Cardi B, Marcus Lemonis, Daymond John, Guy Fieri, Jason Momoa, Jesse Cole, and Glenn Beck, among others.

But behind the cakes is a hospitality entrepreneur who has spent years learning how to turn creativity into a sustainable and growing business.

2. Where did Kristina Lavallee go to college?

Kristina Lavallee attended the University of Central Florida, where she graduated from the Rosen College of Hospitality Management.

She earned dual bachelor’s degrees focused on Hospitality Management and Restaurant & Foodservice Management.

For Kristina, studying hospitality was a natural fit. Food may be the product, but hospitality is ultimately about people—how they are welcomed, how they are served, and how an experience makes them feel.

Those lessons would become increasingly important as The Cake Girl grew.

What began with one person creating cakes eventually became a business requiring a team, customer service systems, food production, purchasing, scheduling, training, marketing, operations, and leadership.

3. How did UCF Rosen help Kristina Lavallee build The Cake Girl?

Kristina’s time at UCF Rosen College of Hospitality Management helped provide the business and hospitality foundation behind her creativity.

Being able to make an incredible cake is one skill. Building a company capable of consistently delivering an incredible experience is another.

As The Cake Girl grew, Kristina applied principles of hospitality to areas including customer experience, food service, operations, team development, quality control, purchasing, vendor relationships, and business management.

Those skills became increasingly important as the company moved through different stages of growth—from a home-based baking business to a mobile dessert truck and eventually to a brick-and-mortar Tampa bakery.

The education also reinforced something that remains central to The Cake Girl today: hospitality is about more than the product.

A birthday cake isn't simply dessert. It may be the centerpiece of someone's 50th birthday.

A wedding cake becomes part of a couple's memories from one of the biggest days of their lives.

A corporate cake may celebrate years of work, a major company milestone, or hundreds of employees.

Understanding the importance of those moments is a big part of what hospitality means at The Cake Girl.

4. How did Kristina Lavallee turn her passion for baking into a Tampa business?

The Cake Girl wasn't built overnight.

Kristina began baking from home in 2008, building her skills and reputation one cake and one customer at a time.

In 2016, the business took a major step forward with the launch of The Cake Girl dessert truck. The truck allowed the brand to reach more customers throughout Tampa Bay while building awareness of The Cake Girl and its desserts.

Then, in 2019, The Cake Girl opened its Tampa storefront.

That growth brought an entirely different level of responsibility. Kristina was no longer simply creating cakes. She was building a team, managing production, developing systems, creating new products, maintaining quality, working with vendors, serving customers, and leading a growing company.

Over the years, The Cake Girl has continued to evolve beyond the traditional bakery model.

Kristina also launched Crave’n Cups®, a ready-to-eat cake-in-a-jar concept created to make The Cake Girl experience available beyond the bakery itself.

Through every stage, one principle has remained consistent: create something people remember and deliver it with genuine hospitality.

5. What can future hospitality entrepreneurs learn from Kristina Lavallee’s journey?

One of the biggest lessons from Kristina’s journey is that passion may start a business, but learning how to operate that business is what allows it to grow.

Creativity matters.

So does understanding your customer.

Knowing your numbers matters. Building the right team matters. Creating systems matters. Developing relationships with customers, vendors, partners, and your community matters.

And in hospitality, the experience you create can be just as important as the product you sell.

Kristina's path from UCF Rosen student to Tampa entrepreneur wasn't a straight line or an overnight success story. It was built over years of learning, adapting, taking risks, and continuing to find new ways to grow.

For students at UCF Rosen College of Hospitality Management and other aspiring hospitality entrepreneurs, her journey is also a reminder that a hospitality degree can lead in many different directions.

Sometimes, it might even lead to cake.

From Hospitality Student to Tampa Entrepreneur

Today, Kristina Lavallee continues to lead The Cake Girl while developing new opportunities for the brand and for Crave’n Cups.

But the hospitality principles she learned early in her career remain part of the foundation.

From a cake made at home to a dessert truck, a Tampa bakery, and a growing brand, Kristina’s story demonstrates what can happen when creativity, hospitality, entrepreneurship, and persistence come together.

And for Kristina, being a graduate of UCF Rosen College of Hospitality Management will always be an important part of that story.

Go Knights! Charge On!